


An Ideal Warden

by Raaj



Series: P5 Roleswaps [1]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: AU, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Persona 5 Protagonist is from Inaba, Roleswap, yaldabaoth may be a father figure here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29489994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raaj/pseuds/Raaj
Summary: As the fog causes confusion in Inaba, a new god teaches a young child about the danger of desire.
Series: P5 Roleswaps [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2166093
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	An Ideal Warden

The eye appeared the third time Ren watched the midnight channel. His parents weren’t around to mind him staying up late, so he’d been watching it every night after it rained. The rumor had been that you were supposed to see your soulmate, but as pretty as she was–and a princess?–Ren wasn’t sure he’d want to marry her. She was a little strange. And he’d looked up what a ‘harem’ was, and he was guessing if that was what she was looking for, the whole ‘soulmate’ part of the rumor probably wasn’t right anyway. But she was interesting, the show way different from anything else on tv, so he watched out of curiosity, leaning in close to the screen, an odd, staticky feeling brushing against the tip of his nose–

And then he flung himself back as the static exploded in blaring sound from the tv. The screen flickered to black before red lines zig-zagged over it, forming an eye that scanned from left to right and then rested on Ren as though it could _see him_.

A low, deep voice just barely cut through the static: “ _this…world…distorted”,_ and then the tv set silenced, dark.

Some of his friends thought the talking eye was cool when he told them about it. Some of them thought he was making it up, though he didn’t see what was so weird about the tv show that only played on rainy nights tossing in a talking eye. Maybe no one else had caught it, but he knew what he’d seen.

And it seemed to be right. The world was distorted. Ren had always known, of course, things weren’t as simple as fairy tales liked to say. There was crime, and some people were judged and hated just for how they’d been born, and he’d always known his parents kept secrets from him but now he was realizing they kept secrets from each other, and that…didn’t seem right. He understood parents keeping secrets from kids because they were trying to protect them, and his parents hadn’t realized yet how mature he already was which bugged him but he always thought it’d end up fine because there’d be a day in the future when they would be honest with him and take him seriously.

But it turned out the secrets they were keeping from him and each other were too big, and when they were finally honest with him it was to tell him they were getting divorced, and he would be living with his mother. When his father got drunk he decided to be very honest and tell Ren they were getting divorced in part because he wasn’t actually his son.

Ren wasn’t completely surprised to find out they weren’t blood-related. He’d always been told he took after his mother in looks and temperament. Academic talent too. He’d barely ever heard anyone say he resembled his father, and his grandmother–his dad’s mother–had joked once or twice about him looking more like the mailman. He was mature enough now that he knew his grandmother hadn’t actually meant he was the mailman’s son, but she hadn’t exactly been joking either. “The mailman” was just a stand-in for a stranger. Ren had made up stories in his head when he was really young that he’d been born to magical beings and been charmed to look like his mom so that he could live with people. When he was older he’d considered that maybe his mom had already been pregnant with him and his father had married her to protect the two of them from judgment, like he’d read happening in some stories. So it had been a thought, usually far in the back of his head, that they might not be blood-related.

He’d just thought that even on the off-chance they weren’t, his father would already have known and loved him anyway. But it turned out his mother had lied to both of them for eleven years. Or twelve, for his dad. Of course his dad wouldn’t love him after that.

The midnight channel was a very welcome distraction in the new apartment, and the eye that sometimes spoke to Ren at the end understood how he felt. _“This world is distorted.”_ It wasn’t just how easily his family had cracked and he no longer saw half the people he’d considered family; his hometown was plagued by strange happenings. A bunch of older kids were kidnapped. Two young women were killed in strange ways, and then a teacher. _“Ruined by desire.”_ All the teenagers who disappeared showed up on the midnight channel, talking about strange things they wanted to do. Ren wasn’t sure at first that their desires were really so bad, just– _weird_ –but the eye said they were wrong, the reason they were in danger. An older boy confessed to killing the teacher for attention. A police officer confessed to killing the women for fun.

The eye said that the aberrant desires of the world needed to be brought under control. It didn’t talk down to Ren but spoke to him frankly, telling him about how distorted desires led teenagers astray and led adults to abuse positions of authority, cheat their partners, and perpetuate oppression for their own gain. If those errant desires were crushed, people would obey the mores of society and live more harmoniously.

The eye said Ren could help them do that, and after the chaos that had plagued his town and his life for the last year, he was eager to learn what he could do. Everyone deserved a more peaceful world than this one.

After that night, the eye appeared on his phone instead of the tv. Ren no longer stayed up until midnight to watch the mystery show. Instead he slept, and dreamed of cells full of smiling inmates. They were happy to be in their cells, and there was order among them because of the rules they followed. Sometimes the stillness of the rows of cells bothered Ren, and he tried to liven things up, but he quickly learned to stop after a few tries when the inmates seemed more perturbed than intrigued. They forgave Ren. They were more upset about the prisoners who had escaped from their cells and roamed free, dangerous. As he listened to the inmates in the prison, night after night, he started to realize some of the descriptions they gave matched people in the real world. He paid sharper attention, kept his ear out for more rumors, learned to be more charming so he could direct conversations to the answers he was looking for.

He found the inmates were right. Those people _were_ dangerous.

Fortunately, the eye told him of a method to bring them back in line, and Ren helped the peaceful prison grow as one of its wardens.

**Author's Note:**

> When I wrote the AU for Akechi being sent to Tokyo for actually-real assault I kept trying to figure out a role for Ren, but I don't really see him being Black Mask the same way Akechi was. I just like the idea of Yaldabaoth managing to convince him to work toward a goal of order (under the belief of "this will bring peace and that's what matters most") more.


End file.
